Store's selling crazy expensive items

[Supernova28]

I had a thought for a rule suggestion, but first I wanted to see what people actually thought. As the title suggests, it's all to do with some of the insane prices in places like jewellery stores or player owned clothing stores. 

 

Don't get me wrong, I don't care about paying for essentially an AI image in my inventory, but where do they pull their prices from? I've seen one store selling a $350,000 Rolex! Now... Here me out. This is what I'm thinking about suggesting as a rule change:

 

All stores have to have at least one of every item they sell in stock in their business property inventory. Well what difference does that make you ask? Well, if you've ever actually bought one of these insanely priced items, you'll usually get a PM from the cashier telling you to hold on while they make the item. Now this isn't a grudge with saving time. No. It' highlights that business owners don't actually invest their money into their stock until someone buys it from a gameplay perspective. (Minus goods deliveries). 

 

So what all that means is, a store owner could price something through the ceiling, safe in the knowledge it really doesn't matter. If someone buys it, sure he pays the 50% to make the item but then he instantly gains the profit. Had he actually had to take a risk and invest in the item and hope it sells, would be an entirely different story. Custom items like these directly from the source have no assigned value. It's just whatever the business owner decides to price it at. Unlike car dealerships or pawn store's where there's actually a reference on the value. 

 

The goal of potentially suggesting that as a rule change would be to manage the server economy in a sense. It'd stop people creating unrealistic and greedily priced items without the risk of consequence and might in turn create a more realistic atmosphere for both the person buying as prices likely stabilise and also for the store owner's themselves who have to think more carefully about what they actually sell and maybe even invest in some market research RP. It might even promote stores to do sales. If they originally had something at say 100k (cost them 50k to make) but it hasn't sold in months, they could advertise they're having a sale on select items and drop it down to try and make some money back.

 

Edit: Thinking about it further, such a small change could really shift the dynamics of stores. People making their first businesses would be forced to start small and in cheaper locations. While on the surface that's kinda shitty. Not many people intentionally make small businesses. It's go big or go home. So having a little progression like that might be interesting for both owners and players in general as they see a broader range of stores across a wider area of the map. With low, mid and high range stuff. We mostly have high end at the moment. Because you can. And if you just can then why not? Maybe it could even go a step further and have an IFM scheme tied to it with counterfeit jewellery and clothing mingling with businesses to give their fairly legal operation a boost. 

 

Disclaimer: I really am not winging about spending script money. It's a number on a screen I don't care. It's just something I feel could balance out the eco a little.

 

Anyway, let me know your thoughts! Curious if I'm the only one who's noticed the trend of extremely expensive items floating around. And what do you think about the server economy in terms of player owned stores?

 

 

Edited February 6 by Supernova28

[Red Reika]

It's just a reflex of how easy it is to make money, how easy it is to accumulate money, and how nobody have any real reason to spend their money on anything else other than luxuries, because they want to.

 

All long term players are well established sitting on 6 million plus and making at minimal 50 grand a week, so those prices aren't really that out of this world.

 

It makes no sense IC but the economy in the server never did.

 

Just do as everybody else and ignore values, don't roleplay your money and just label things as a vague "expensive" or "cheap" until one day the economy fix finally drops.

 

As for the suggestion itself, I'd -1 it pretty hard.

 

That'd be a very good way of running business out of money and having them close down.

Edited February 6 by Red Reika

[Supernova28]

1 minute ago, Red Reika said:

All long term players are well established sitting on 6 million plus and making at minimal 50 grand a week, so those prices aren't really that out of this world.

 

I reckon, it'd give those people more things to spend it on. If you're at 6 million and wanna open a luxury jewelers in Rockford Hills, instead of just buying the building and paying an interior designer, you'd also have to invest say 1 mil in the items you're going to sell, shifting the dynamic a little of just how easy it is to make money. 

[Red Reika]

1 minute ago, Supernova28 said:

 

I reckon, it'd give those people more things to spend it on. If you're at 6 million and wanna open a luxury jewelers in Rockford Hills, instead of just buying the building and paying an interior designer, you'd also have to invest say 1 mil in the items you're going to sell, shifting the dynamic a little of just how easy it is to make money. 

Problem with that is that upstart business don't have that money, those are, keyword, people who play on the server for over a year already.

I don't see that as much of an issue, though. At the end of the day, it's just someone providing you with some useless roleplay item that you are willing to pay, maybe for a price flex, maybe because you really want it, it doesn't matter. Making business suffer and bleed to provide you said item just seem overly punitive to the already crased out system that is running a business, just for the pure sake of doing so, since that provides no counterpoint benefit whatsoever.

[Supernova28]

1 minute ago, Red Reika said:

Problem with that is that upstart business don't have that money, those are, keyword, people who play on the server for over a year already..

 

Maybe we'd see more realistic upstarts in that case. Low end jewellers with a family run vibe in smaller parts of town selling relatively cheap stuff, working their way up. Instead of off the bat opening a Regent Street level store. Think about it, it'd make the range of businesses a lot more dynamic. 

[Red Reika]

8 minutes ago, Supernova28 said:

 

Maybe we'd see more realistic upstarts in that case. Low end jewellers with a family run vibe in smaller parts of town selling relatively cheap stuff, working their way up. Instead of off the bat opening a Regent Street level store. Think about it, it'd make the range of businesses a lot more dynamic. 

Reason why I'm not sold on that is because that'd effect business all across the board, and more heavily so the niche ones that hardly anyone actually buy anything from and they have survive off walk-ins and startshifts (and in most case pay to open).

The suggestion basically says all clothes stores, shoes stores, music stores and maybe even some cafés and restaurants should have at least 1 of each item of their menus and catalogs built and made waiting for people to buy. That's a blow most places can't afford to have and it'd cause people to both break out (because low sales since that's how the server works) and just drop out.

We should be looking for ways to incentive people to start more business, not to give them reasons to go out of business.

Personally I think its perfectly fine if someone want to start a five stars Michelin restaurant or a street corner junk food place, so long as the RP for the server is being provided, both should be encouraged. 

[Supernova28]

1 minute ago, Red Reika said:

Reason why I'm not sold on that is because that'd effect business all across the board, and more heavily so the niche ones that hardly anyone actually buy anything from and they have survive off walk-ins and startshifts (and in most case pay to open).

The suggestion basically says all clothes stores, shoes stores, music stores and maybe even some cafés and restaurants should have at least 1 of each item of their menus and catalogs built and made waiting for people to buy. That's a blow most places can't afford to have and it'd cause people to both break out (because low sales since that's how the server works) and just drop out.

We should be looking for ways to incentive people to start more business, not to give them reasons to go out of business.

Personally I think its perfectly fine if someone want to start a five stars Michelin restaurant or a street corner junk food place, so long as the RP for the server is being provided, both should be encouraged. 

 

You make a lot of good points there. I can see it from your angle. This is exactly why I make discussions before suggestions. Perhaps, a way to still promote new RP and balance it against an insane economy, would be to say you need one of every item that costs over X amount of money, meaning businesses that are more of a niche still have the chance to provide flavor. Say a music shop as you said. CDs, Records - all fair game. Maybe even some instruments. But if they then want to say have a "Signed album" or you know, maybe a very high end record player, they need at least one of those genuinely in stock. 

 

The whole point though is to encourage people not to price things into the stratosphere. If they're selling niche, cheap items, even if they did indeed need one of everything, it'd probably only set them back 30k to do so.  Or even so... What this rule change could allow for, is for say a resteraunt for example? They could have the actual value of say a steak be $200, but mark it up to $700. That'd give some illusion of quality too. You pay a lot for the food but it tastes cheap. But if you get what you pay for then it means they're using quality ingredients and deserve the high esteem.

 

 

[sincerelyyE]

I think you're overblowing how many people spend money on expensive rp flavour items.

 

I personally would buy them, if not that I know for a fact I'll lose it within days because I get mugged at least once a week. Once I literally got mugged after just having gotten mugged while walking to the police station to report getting mugged, because the prior thieves had taken my character's phone and car. This is why I got the cheapest engagement ring for my character's partner that I could, because it was bought with the expectation it'd be taken sooner or later, lmao.

 

[once upon a time in reality]

Not necessary 

[Momo's Revenge]

I don't see this as much of an issue for /createitem stuff. Its an issue in pawn shops.